Birth-control denial the height of arrogance
By DAN K. THOMASSON
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER A rape victim walks into a pharmacy with a prescription for a morning-after pill that will terminate a possible pregnancy and is told politely it will not be filled, and that she must go elsewhere, no matter how inconvenient. That is, if the pharmacist has the decency even to return the prescription. The message is clear: Tough luck. If a child has been conceived in the violation of her body, it is the victim's sacred duty to have the baby. Another woman, whose body will not support a pregnancy, submits a prescription for simple birth control pills and is also rejected. Or a young man and woman in the throes of hormonal conflict seek a package of condoms but can't purchase one, and then end up victims of normal, post-pubescent passion. Are those and other examples exaggerations? Hardly. They are manifestations of a real effort by a growing movement of political- and religious-based groups to withhold access to birth control and anti-abortion measures through pharmaceutical denial.
| 
